The capital maintenance of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plantscheduled for before the end of the year, has been postponed again.
This was confirmed to the newspaper Granma the Cuban Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, who did not specify the date on which maintenance is now scheduled to be carried out that only two months ago the president Miguel Díaz-Canel had considered it “unpostponable”.
“Due to a technical and risk problem, we decided to move the capital maintenance of Guiteras and make a short stop for one month at the beginning of 2026 to face the summer,” said the official, without explaining more about it.
The minister pointed out that this short stop of the Guiteras at the beginning of next year would be done “while we support Felton, which is also unstable”, which generates more uncertainty for 2026, of which he clearly said that “it will not be a year in which we reach zero blackouts.”
Díaz-Canel in the Guiteras thermoelectric plant: capital maintenance cannot be postponed
The maintenance that will no longer be
La Guiteras, the main unitary block in the country, has accumulated problems for years, while it has not received in-depth general maintenance for more than a decade, as explained by the sector’s own authorities.
This complex situation has caused repeated failures in the Matanzas plant that have had repercussions on the entire National Electric System (SEN)—and translated into greater blackouts—and have even caused several general falls in the last year.
For this reason, the Electrical Union (UNE) announced in September that the thermoelectric plant would undergo capital maintenance from the end of 2025 and for at least six months. During that time, deep work would be done on the boiler, as well as on the turbine and other areas of the block.
This information was confirmed shortly after during a visit by Díaz-Canel to Guiteras, which then disconnected again due to different situations, the last of which in November to “solve urgent defects”.
Now, the new postponement of capital maintenance opens the door to new short-term failures and breakages.
Another spike in blackouts
The decision to postpone the maintenance of the Guiteras coincides with another peak in blackouts, which has already left two new negative records this week and a partial disconnection in the west of the country.
This situation is driven by constant breakdowns and repairs in old thermoelectric plants and a worsening of the fuel deficit, which has paralyzed more than 1,000 MW in distributed generation.
Today there are 1017 MW that will stop being produced due to this reason and the lack of lubricants, while 507 will be lost due to thermal limitations.
Furthermore, none of the thermal units stopped due to breakdowns or maintenance should be incorporated on this day, according to the UNE.
With this, the impact – which last night reached 1,982 MW and at dawn was 1,145 MW – must once again exceed 2,000 MW at the nighttime peak, according to the official estimate.
Meanwhile, the availability of generation will continue to be well below demand, with only 1,392 MW produced, a figure that could even decrease if another outage occurs during the day.
